I purchased this speakers since I am a keen listener aiming for sound quality. I have Boston speakers in the past, car audio and home audio gear so I was curious to try this pair of VR950's that I picked up a few months ago.
I am using an old school Onkyo 5.1 amplifier and decided to try them at stereo mode from the amplifier.
Upon initial testing with my old school Realistic SCR-2500 stereo amp ( rated at 35rms per side) the speakers sounded 'larger than its size' I placed one in the corner room for added bass response and it sounded like I had a subwoofer present with the speakers. The Boston VR950 comprises of dual 5 inch shielded woofer cones and an aluminium tweeter for highs. The tweeters are bright but not overly bright that the midrange and bass is drowned out. I adjusted the tone settings and it sound pretty impressive just run in stereo.

Boston Acoustics has always impressed my ears so I will be holding on to these for a while. Don't let the size fool you, but you need a decent quality amplifier to run them so you can set up the speakers rightly with the amps setting configuration.

Only downsize is the black speaker cloth grill which covers the entire speakers but that's only cosmetic and does not affect sound quality from these small, but larger then life speakers. I compared them to my old school NEC-2300 floorstanders which has a 12 inch woofer, and the bass was more accurate with minimal overhang to the old school NEC speakers. The bass seems to be controlled even at louder levels with no sign of speaker fatigue from both woofer and tweeter.

Classical and voices appear realistic and well balanced from the speakers. I just like listening to them either via TV ( fibre optic / toslink cable to the amp) or listening to the radio.
I wish I could get my hands on the bigger VR-975 model as it has a subwoofer and I bet they would sound phenomenal! At the moment, I will keep enjoying this speakers.

I bought these speakers about 12 years ago and have had no regrets. I didn't buy them for booming bass, for that I use my Velodyne sub - which is equally as old. The sound from this combo is AMAZING for the budget I had to work with back then, I was just starting out in life on my own, and had a tight budget to deal with. To this day I have been satisfied with these VR 950's and VR 1's I have been jamming away to this past decade. I was driving the speakers with a Yamaha HTR-5280 but now I am using an Onkyo TX-NR 1008 - which is really driving them well with the 135rms, they sound awesome. If they had larger bass drivers and a better low frequency response they would have got 5 stars all around. But let's face it for the money I paid you Can't beat the sound. Now I am finally looking to upgrade my speakers to the Boston Acoustics (BA) RS 322 GB or BA 336. I will never buy anything other than BA speakers from here on out. You just can't compare any others when it comes to sound for price. I guess you cn say, you get more bang for your buck when it comes down to it!

tonal balance, clarity, midrange definition, and excellent highs.

Bass extension. Also, the enclosure seems to restrict the sound in the upper bass and lower midrange, unless the speaker is driven by a healthy wattage.

I must be honest. I love the sound of Boston Acoustics. Before I knew of the "brand", when I was a kid looking for car speakers, I asked the salesman to play music from each of the sets he had, one at a time. Every time he played through this one set... The warm tonal sweetness I heard just captivated me. I found out, of course, there is a cost for that. But, it's worth it. I find the same sound quality in Boston's floorstanding models. Of course, the VR950 is somewhat a "compromise" speaker, in that it is not a full-frequency monitor. It cannot reproduce the lowest frequency sounds, and it is slightly less efficient than I would like. But, what they lack in slam, they make up for in so many ways through the mid and high range, especially when they're driven as they should be. I paid just around $400 for these speakers as a closeout deal from Tweeter. When combined with a PV600 subwoofer at a 60Hz crossover, the combination is fantastic for home theater, and very good for 2 channel music. I have listened to a number of speakers in the $500-1000 range that have more testosterone, but none that has a better voice. It cannot be done better for less, even without the PV600's assistance. If my budget were $2000 just for the front pair, I would have a lot of research to complete. But, I have a feeling that the Boston name would still be on the list.

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Other Boston speakers. Auditioned a number of other floorstanding speakers in the 300 to 800 range, including Polk, C/V, JBL, Bose, Mirage, etc...

Excellent sound stage and mids. Good highs. Very efficient. Only paid 350.00 for them.

No bass at all.

I have been looking to buy a new receiver and have tested the Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony and Yamaha receivers else where on this site. The current receiver I have right now is the Yamaha 1400 receiver. Its an excellent receiver. I purchased the 950 at Sound Advice, at their half price sale for 350.00. In the shop these speakers sounded much better than the new bostons series and most other speakers we listened to. I bought these to replace a much larger pair of Dahlquist DQ 10, which are excellent sounding speakers. First off I must say, these speakers sound pretty good for the price. The mids are excellent, some of the best I have ever heard. Even better than the Dahlquist, which have very good mids. Voices sounded very good on the 950. The highs are also good. But not nearly as good as the Dahlquist. The highs on the 950 are acceptable. As for the bass, there is none. Neither on music or movies. This can be expected. As the 950 only has two 5 inch mids and a tweeter. Science is science, in order to get bass you have to move air. Something just not possible with two 5 inch speakers. But that does explain the excellent mids as the two 5 inch speakers reproduce excellent voices and mids. I am very disappointed in the bass of the 950, they are very nice sounding speakers. With very good sound stage and excellent mids and good highs. If they just had some kind of bass I reccommend them. You might ask how much bass do the 950 have. The Dahlquist DQ 10 which are excellent sounding speakers, but have always been said not to have very good bass. But compared to the 950, the Dahlquist sounds as if they have built in subs. This is with the exactly same source material and receiver. Also the 950 are much more efficient than the Dahlquist, so they are much louder, which should also give the 950 more bass output. The 950 just dont have any bass at all. Paired with a sub the 950 do sound very good, but you must have a sub to get full range with these speakers. These speakers are a good deal for 350.00 so I might keep them and use them with a sub. For 700.00 I would return them as fast as I can pack them up. At that price these speakers are very overpriced, seeing they have no bass at all.

Excellent clarity on high notes. Very clear sound.

No bass. No mids. No 'kick'.

I was shopping for something that would make my brain rattle at high volumes and was set on either Klipsch or KLF, and decided to go to Harvey's, the local 'high end' audio store to see if there was something I was missing. The salesman at talked me into these (floor model), I must admit, saying they were so well made, great this, great that, blah blah blah, without realizing that I didn't need the smooth clear high ends that are associated with classical listening or DDD recorded tracks like one would find on a Dire Straits CD. I do enjoy a nice, refined sound now and then, but what I was really after was, to put it bluntly, freakin' loud speakers that would punch clean bass and mids at high volume, which the BA's just will not do. If you are looking for jazz/classical speakers that are clean and crisp for your highs, then these may be OK for you. If you want something that will double as a cathartic release by turning Metallica up to 10 and letting your worries leave you, this is not the speaker you want. Get the Klipsch.

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Klipsch, KLF, JBL, Polk

Solid bass,crisp highs,efficient @ low volume

A little muddy on bassy tracks,low-mids a tad weak.

Just bought these on close-out & am fairly happy with them.Wanted Viennas,checkbook (& wife) said these.Brightness seems to be calming down & the bass is suprising,although the high bass to low-mids seem a tad weak.Have these hooked to my Yamaha RXV-620 receiver(5 X 100) & it seems to be a good match.Those who aren't getting good bass with these should suspect their sources or inspect the settings on their sources.Sound getting better as played more.I don't need a sub for music tracks with these.Still use my sub for HT though. Thought these sounded better than the comparable Deftechs.A great deal @ $400,good deal @ $700.

Similar Products Used:

Klipsch Fortes,velodyne,JBL

everything

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Best speaker out their period.Dont listen to the dans a all those circuit city lovers that envy that polk junk.These people dont even own these because they cant afford em hahah. Why would some one spend this kind of money and them complain about them come on. Get a life you punks.

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every thing

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its already bin over a year since i purchased these mighty speakers. these speakers are in my basement and are used for music play back, running them is a 2 channel yamaha reciever. i admit it took me a while to get into them. coulda bin the burn in period but i have also been upgrading my room to get rid of standing waves like a bit of foam on walls wich will suck up a bit of the high end. i dont use any eq on these and they rock. any 1 who cuts this speaker down for the way they sound they must have crapy room acoustics or are goin to the night club to much with the big honkin speakers dumbed up with eq and are distorting.

Complete dynamic range. Suprisingly strong bass. I have a 12'X13' room and with my new Denon dra685 receiver, it is awesome. And the wife loves the cabinets.

Only criticism is they could topple over on a carpet. Call or e-mail Boston for free carpet spikes, qand enjoy!!

Auditioned the Klipsch RF II & Energy C's Wife loved the sleek lines & polished top cap (nothing sonic there, but she's the wife, huh? The salesman thought the 950's had Subs, that is how GOOD the bass sounded. I came back with my copy of Are We Dancing Yet? by Jane Siberry and bought them on the spot!! This song has acoustic piano, bass,accordion,electric keyboard, acoustic & electric guitar and Jane's incredible silky voice whispering, groaning and literally making your skin crawl!! The 950's did it.

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Yamaha NS 100, Old Kenwoods, JBL, Advent,etc,etc,etc.

Accurate, crystalline, highs and mids. Astonishingly deep and fast bass and midbass. Elegant svelte design.

Burn-in period may frustrate some for the true character of the speaker will not be evident until the 30th or 40th hour. Subwoofer is recommended if you need it for HT duty.

After giving the speaker approximately 35 hours to break in I have found that the initial bright mid and high range of the speaker has tempered and become somewhat mellow and more natural sounding. I average between 2-3 hours a night for about 3 weeks of listening to all my old favorites and found that this speaker has gradually changed in character. Upon initial set-up I was quite upset at such overly harsh and brittle sounding speakers. Now, I simply cannot wait to turn on my Kenwood vr-509 receiver with an excellent Dolby Pro Logic II processor and feel completely engulfed in the sound. Bobby Caldwell's 'What You Won't Do For Love' classic on his Time and Again CD is outright fantastic. Caldwell's silky vocals on these Lynnfield tweeters and midwoofers are a sound to behold. I've never appreciated this artist as I do now. Yo Yo Ma's playing of Tan Dun's "Desert Capriccio" on the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon cd shows the speed and detail revealed by these speakers. I had used JMLabs Cobalt 805 as a point of reference to pick my 'budget' speakers. The JMLabs being shelf speakers were out of my budget of under $600 speakers. The Boston Acoustics VRM-50 came closest to the sound that I preferred, but still went over my budget since I had to add another $150 for speaker stands. The VR950 matched the resolution, wide image, and depth of sound stage, to both speakers plus I didn't have to buy speaker stands. Although the black sock that surrounds the speaker sounded a bit unconventional, once I saw the speaker itself the stance (about 38") and the clean lines lends to a svelte, interior design friendly (as well as wife friendly) concept that went well with my decor. If you purchase the speaker email Boston Acoustics to receive the spikes. If you like detail, accurate vocal representation, and an ability to play a wide variety of music as well as HT duty this should be added to any list for a listen.

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Boston Acoustics A-60, JMLabs Cobalt 805, B&W DM303, Boston Acoustics VRM50, Monsoons Planers FPF600, Magnepans MMG